The mayor of Estepona, José María García Urbano (PP), will testify in court on November 18, as sources familiar with the procedure have confirmed to EL PAÍS. García Urbano will go to the local Court of First Instance and Instruction number 5, after having requested it and as a defendant. This condition allows you to go to a lawyer, legal sources point out. Once you provide your testimony, the instructor will decide if the case continues and under what conditions.
The complainant, a Local Police agent, confirmed his complaint this Friday, according to legal sources. García Urbano maintains that he has been the victim of a false complaint. “The complainant has made falsehoods and contradictions during his statement,” say municipal sources. The councilor asked, as soon as the complaint hit the media, that he be heard in court, “voluntarily and as soon as possible” to highlight “the absolute lack of foundation of the complaint,” they add. According to the Estepono City Council, the instructor agreed to take a statement with an order issued on October 31. “In no case is it produced as an investigation,” they emphasize.
The complaint was admitted for processing a week later and it was agreed to take a statement from the complainant to decide the next steps to take based on “the evidence of a crime that can be collected.” In his writing, the complainant claims that he had sexual relations on several occasions with the councilor and that he was forced to do so because of the fear he had of losing his job. The story of the judicial complaint details that since he began working as an intern at the Estepona City Council, in March 2022, he felt that “the defendant was looking at him” and had “special treatment” for him, “not in accordance with the normal relationship.” of work that a mayor can have with his officials.” According to his story, he appreciated that he had “a libidinous intention” and discovered shortly after that “he sought to satisfy his sexual desires by taking advantage of his status as mayor.”
The complainant reports that García Urbano met him at a hotel “in order to have sexual relations” on an unspecified date, which he places between March 2022 and June 2023. According to his testimony, he agreed “out of fear of losing his job and As a consequence, not being able to support his family.” He is willing to provide witnesses to what happened in that hotel and “documentary evidence” of other properties where other alleged sexual encounters took place. He also claims that he offered him “help of 2,000 euros per month” and that he found him a lease for him and his partner in a building called Panorama.
The complainant maintains that, when he wanted to stop having sexual relations, he received threats from the councilor telling him that “if he did not play his part, his professional career was over forever and that he was going to make his life impossible, since he has contacts so that he would not can work anywhere.”
García Urbano has been mayor of Estepona with the PP since 2011, the first electoral call after the Astapa case against corruption, which in July 2008 turned the local PSOE upside down and swept away the heirs of Gilismo. In the last elections, in 2023, he obtained 17 of the 25 councilors of the municipality and revalidated the title of councilor.
After the judicial complaint came to light, the Estepona City Council announced its intention to appear in the case to request that García-Urbano be heard, “voluntarily and as soon as possible”, with the intention of “revealing the absolute lack of foundation for said complaint.” The City Council frames this complaint as an “unacceptable and unfair campaign to damage the personal dignity and career of the mayor and the position he holds with a single and clearly spurious purpose.”
The Malaga Court made public this Friday the sentence in the major corruption case centered on the municipality, 18 years after the beginning of the police investigation. He Astapa case has been settled.
